Field of Blood by Wilson, Eric (pdf e book reader .TXT) 📕

pictures for her. He saw life as a complex and beautiful thing, an enigma that spanned borders and nationalities. He complained every now and then that Gina stepped on his feelings, and she always told him to grow up and get a thicker skin.

They were good for each other.

Even with Jed’s position and Gina’s job as a tour guide at Ruby Falls, they barely scraped by. Rent and water bills were killing them. Satellite TV: canceled. Constant late payments on car insurance. Canned food and frozen vegetables.

They were making ends meet, though—on their own.

Nikki gestured at the bar. “Doesn’t he clean up after himself ?”

“The bowl? That’s mine.”

A flat-out lie. Gina harped regularly about tidiness, and this morning she’d even reminded Jed to clean up since her mother would be visiting.

“Why, child? Why do you do that? I fail to see the point.”

“Because I like my cereal soggy.”

“No,” said Nikki. “Why do you cover for him? I warned you—quite emphatically, if I recall—not to tread this path of promiscuity. And yet here you sit, reaping what you’ve sown, surviving on generic foods and rice.”

“Sowing rice. Not so bad, in the global scheme of things.”

“Where do you get this contempt for the upbringing I gave you?”

“You’re the one who moved us here, to the land of the free, home of the brave. What’d you expect? Gotta live with the consequences.”

“Don’t you see, Gina, how you’re letting the gangrene eat at your soul?”

“Oops. Guess you missed a few spots, huh?”

“How is it that I’m incapable of reasoning with my own daughter? It’s a mystery to me, a bona fide mystery.” Her pink lips expelled a sigh. “And all the while, countless others come to me for enlightenment.”

Nikki had flourished since their arrival in the U.S. of Make-a-Buck A. While serving as a housecleaner for the city’s upper class, she had acquired a wealthy patron, a woman smitten with her stories of survival under communist hardship. Soon, she was on the speaking circuit, first giving inspirational lectures, then headlining seminars that sometimes netted her five figures in one weekend.

Releasing. Cleansing. Renewal . . . A Session with N. K. Lazarescu.

She used only the initials, to further avoid detection, and always addressed audiences with her raven hair pulled back in a purple-and-gold-threaded gypsy scarf. Not only did it disguise her appearance, it added to the impression of supernatural insight. They responded to her soft accent, the enviable beauty of this woman in her late forties, and her invigorating blend of spirituality and self-reliance.

How, Gina now wondered, was she supposed to combat her mother’s success? She swiveled on the couch, looked back over her shoulder, and said, “Have I shown you my tattoo?”

“Your what?”

“My tat.”

“You mean to tell me you’ve defiled your own body?”

“Just doing what you taught me, bleeding away the sin.” The pattern tingled as Gina lifted her shirt. “You like it, Nikki?”

“I think it’s bound to draw more trouble your direction.”

“C’mon. You’ve used those fear tactics long enough.” Gina hitched one leg under herself on the couch, then dabbed the tissue again at her ear. “I’m over it. I won’t keep hiding from something that doesn’t exist.”

“But they’re still out there, I’m afraid.”

“They. Who the hell are the mysterious they?”

“Watch your tongue, young lady.”

Gina bounded to her feet and moved into the kitchen.

Since the move to the States, she’d attended public schools and, to her mother’s chagrin, learned to speak like an American, even think like one.

Of course, Chattanooga was worlds removed from Cuvin. Crouched between tree-spiked ridges, this city boasted shiny cars on most of its streets, bright clothes and current styles. Newspapers criticized the government openly. And, for young Gina, there had been a novelty: black men and women with wide noses and full mouths and stories chiseled into their frank stares. That was how she’d realized not all Americans were as carefree as she once believed.

Still, she preferred this culture to her mother’s zealotry.

She had no interest in the tales that rumbled through Transylvanian villages, misguiding the uneducated, compelling some to drive needles into cadaver belly buttons so that bodies would stay in their graves, or to carve out and fry in lead skillets the hearts of corpses suspected of being vampires.

Or to bleed the insect bites of their only daughters.

Nope. Not her thing.

Yet she did recognize something humble, even honorable, in those who refused to lift high their own intellects as the measuring rods for all truth.

Her own physical senses had fallen short in codifying some of her experiences, and even though she would never admit it aloud—certainly not in front of Nikki—her attempts to reject the spiritual realm outright had failed.

A spark remained.

It flitted and danced, refusing to be snuffed out.

Gina dumped the bowl in the sink, then ran the faucet while scrub-bing dishes with the coarse side of the sponge. Her body ached from the collision, but she saw no reason to make a show of her pain.

“Do you realize you’re a target?” Her mother was talking again. “We all are. That tattoo, that despicable marring of your body—it only under-lines your ignorance. There are creatures out to destroy you, and you’ve joined forces with them by painting one on your skin.”

“Actually, it’s ink.”

“It’s an angel.”

“Like me, right? Your little angel.”

“Fallen angels.” Nikki’s voice dropped to a whisper. “That’s what they are. Since the beginning, they’ve plagued mankind. They’re Collectors, here to steal as many souls as possible from the hands of the Almighty.”

“What about the good angels? You know, those plump little babies with the harps and wings?”

“A misrepresentation. Greek mythology’s pollution of Christianity.”

Even with the strains of truth that seemed to play through Nikki’s words, it seemed to Gina there was something out of tune, not quite right. She couldn’t help but goad her mother along. “Are you saying only bad angels exist? We’re just stuck here on our own?”

“There are more good than evil, don’t misunderstand. But that doesn’t negate the corrosive power of the Separated.”

“‘Gotta keep ‘em separated,’” Gina sang.

“What?”

“It’s the Offspring.